SUK ZONE: it's all a pointless exercise and you're just screaming into the void

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > SUK ZONE: it's all a pointless exercise and you're just screaming into the void

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Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

anime was right posted:

hillary clinton was a greek tragedy waiting to happen.

i think she is a talented, intelligent person. i think she is (or was) very, very ambitious. i think hillary clinton is a one in a million kind of person. she managed to avoid actual scandal and survive dozens of fake ones slung at her every day.

but the republican machine worked. they dragged her through the mud for 20 years, and she thought, i'm doing it anyway, gently caress it. and i think every person on the planet should applaud her. she worked the washington game better than almost any other person in history. she tamed a thousand-headed hydra and was able to unleash it onto the world. but i think she played the game too hard in a couple of aspects:

first, in her attempt to rightfully avoid scandals with a private email server. gently caress what y'all say, i genuinely think she used the drat thing so a republican didn't huff over very typo she sent in internet greeting cards after the clinton administration. she had her own best interests in mind and i don't think she had any intention of loving anyone over with the drat thing. look at what they put her through and go "yes, i want these people reading every word, ever letter, every bit of data i send". but when the email server was discovered, i think this is where the divide really comes in. the republicans flung so much mud at her, that her secrecy and double-speak like a true old-school politican became her downfall. there was now an item, a tangibility to her secrecy. this was part one of "hillary clinton is the corrupt democratic machine". if i recall the server was discovered because of benghazi of all loving things. benghazi undermined her ability to avoid being benghazied.

i dont think people care about her emails. i think the emails remind everyone that hillary clinton was rightfully trying to hide poo poo, but there was an image drawn of her trying to do this already as a negative. it fit. the narrative stuck. the word emails makes people think she's hiding something. she was a snake-tongued washington crook in the eyes of many.

second, wall street.

after citizens united (and many other landmark cases), and after the deregulation of wall st, taking in big bucks matters to get elected. this is the perceived washington game. she had to take in millions upon millions of dollars to compete. this was how things were supposed to be done, thought everyone. after all, money wins small elections and always has. money buys you ads. money gets you people to upvote and downvote poo poo on reddit for fucks sake. money is the answer. more money, more control of the media. you get more ads, more ground game, more everything. more money makes for a better campaign because it affords you more opportunities than anyone else. the fact is, she gave into the dark side here and took bribes from wall st because they were going to fund her campaign. they wanted to buy her and make her enact pro bank policies. she went with 'hate the game not the player' because how the gently caress else are you going to win a presidential goddamn election? we have not had many campaigns of this scale, so this seemed like the obvious answer.

but wall street collapsed the economy. her allies caused the collapse. i think most idiots know that (not the super crazy ones, but the ones that lost her the election here). she allied with the enemy and she was corrupt. again, strike 2 for washington.

and i do think bernie sanders exposed this. if this was politics as usual and she had no opponent, tbh, i think she would have seen more scandals being flung at her, but she wouldn't have had such an air of corruption. i do not think this cost her the election, but i think it gave her another handicap to overcome.

third, more obama.

obama loving rules. hes a great dude. real charmer. good with the kids. obama is a one in a billion person. i hesitate to say this, but obama was a loving fluke. he had empty campaign promises and no baggage so everyone could project onto him. he motivated millenials because he was cool. he motivated independents because the republicans were in charge and all the jobs went away. but obama, somehow evaded being strongly tied to wall street. probably because he didn't line his pockets with speech money, i guess. but he had his turn, and white people in the boonies are still hosed. all the job growth went to cities because corporations are too large and so theres no way for local branches to just prop up and compete on the national or global market. small business are stifled and could not create jobs because obama let big corporations run the show.

and this is where the branch breaks for that 10-20% of white people that threw the brick in the window.

washington didnt fix their probems after all the hope-y change-y. hillary wanted to not only do business as usual, but she had the baggage obama didn't with big money and washington corruption. she wanted to break the glass ceiling, and white dudes, instead, wanted to drop the brick through it from above.

she tried to win, but look at all of that. barely any of it was her fault (at least to her team), imo. when you look at this from an omnisesent poitn of view, of course that wouldn't work out. but look at it through her eyes. she made the right calls.

but there were two more flaws, and they were 100% her fault and even with all of that above, she could have salvaged the election.

1) her campaign had no clear idea or voice, and her previous theme harmed her.

"im with her" is a terrible slogan. not because its bad to be with her. nah, she's a pretty alright person with a couple things i dont like attached to her ticket. but it alienated all of the white dudes who got called sexist and they probably were, but they probably tried to improve and weren't total monsters. she made it more about being a woman than being a good politician at first, and this made for a wishy-washy message that went into later stages of the general.

"stronger together" is a loving weak slogan. i see no goal. i see no idea for the future other than social policy. how does this help a white dude? here, let me look at the last two winning slogans.

"yes we can", yes we can what? who gives a poo poo. yes we can ride unicorns. you can project what this means for you. its forward leaning and says something you want will happen, even if that thing is rainbows and elves.

"forward" again, forward to what direction? towards whatever the gently caress i want! its goal oriented. it tells me something good is coming.

hillarys slogans, and overal campaign theme, sold me no good feelings that i could make up for myself.

"make america great again" this is powered entirely by nostalgia, but gently caress, it works. nostalgia is a filter and you can make up whatever good feelings it brings you. remember when you played sonic the hedgehog after school? yeah, we're back to geneis sonic the hedgehog games or whatever. who gives a poo poo. people are morons and they want to feel good about made up things that won't come to them. we want something and we don't know what that is but you better promise us the thing we goddamn want.

hillary did not sell us anything we wanted. she sold us...... not donald j trump, who was selling a shitload of white people: a brick, nostalgia, and racism. and it had just enough support to loving win.

2) she is not charismatic. she is a wonk. she has a fake laugh and a faker smile. obama can pull this off so well, trump, despite being a buffoon, is a chaotic ball of orange digits and lip-like crevices all forming odd shapes, but they're his loving shapes. hillary is a baddass grandma and she tried to be the cool and collected ubermensch and could not pull it off. now, there's argument here to be made, if she really was genuine, or if her attempts to appear like this were to thread the needle of being a woman? gently caress if i know, but she was not herself. she was not her own person. she was a robot like romney, uncomfortable in her own skin and hell, the republicans probably did that to her. its super unfair that she can't yell like bernie, it's super unfair that she can't make self-depreciating jokes, or like a zillion other things. but she did not appear like a genuine person and that harmed the hell out of her. imo she could have gotten better acting lessons or something, but she didnt pull this off at all. obama was charismatic and fun and even if i disagree with him on a million things, he can tell a loving joke better than any other politician on the planet and thats part of why people voted for him. trump is a buffoon, but he is his own special kind of buffoon and people ate it up.

3) i had no idea what she wanted to do. seriously! what the gently caress! donald trump wanted to build a wall. he wanted to export mexicans and import nothing because gently caress global trade. he wanted to give japan nukes or something. poo poo, he has ten thousand policy positions that are concise and soundbyte-y. because he said literally everything ever, that gave people room to project their own policies onto him too. like, jfc. anyway, the point is, i can say like ten things off the top of my head that donald trump would do. hillary clinton would make college less not bad. thats about all i can think of that she can offer. obama offered "no politics as usual/unifted washington" "close guantanamo" and he promised every person in the country a 500 dollar check because the economy loving bombed.

hillary ran a wishy-washy campaign with zero energy and rand on pragmatism and more of the same and suffered for it. she needed a clear vision and a few bombshell promises. she tried to play it cool and it blew up in her hands because people may not want lies, but they want an extension of the truth. hillary promised them the truth at absolute best. and that is a bad marketing strategy. oversell and then when you don't deliver, say you delivered anyway. people are goddamn idiots and marketing works.

so my takeaway is: hillary clinton made some contextually correct choices, and ran a bad campaign as a reasonabley bland candidate. that is why she lost. she is not a bad person. she is super loving talented, but i will tell you a secret:

she would have probably been a great president, but she is bombed the goddamn interview when asked about gasp on her resume. all while donald trump lied in big flashy bulletpoints.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2016 03:27

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 13:10

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Jedi Knight Luigi posted:

P much this. My ultra-conservative younger brother (at least compared to me; I've loved Bernie since before he ran) posted this after her concession speech:

_wikileaks

# ¿ Nov 10, 2016 03:37

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Oh Snapple! posted:

That post is entirely within the context of what Not a Step essentially mentioned: the fight between Shills and Bernie folks in here over it, in which Bernie and his supporters were painted as heartless fucks who just wanted it gone, period. One of the exchanges that has always stuck with me was fishmech telling a dude whose wife actually ended up losing her insurance due to the ACA that not only did he not "give a poo poo" about the wife's "weird edge case" which had left her in constant pain (because more people have insurance, and that's all that matters), but that the poster was probably lying to begin with. That's loving horrible. How the gently caress does anyone who tries to identify as a progressive say something like that (besides "fishmech")? And yet it was said, and it was an attitude that was not limited just to him. All because Bernie ran with the ACA's issues as something in desperate need of fixing to make it a system that was good instead of simply having a few good things attached.

a lot of the bernie supporters were openly being accelerationist assholes after he lost, hence why they were known for wanting to tear everything down because they didn't get 100% of what they wanted immediately

# ¿ Nov 10, 2016 03:38

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Oh Snapple! posted:

oh loving please. this was well before he lost

i'm not trying to defend loving fishmech, i'm just pointing out why some bernie supporters have a reputation of being both really obsessed with bernie sanders and having persecution complexes the size of a continent.

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

They were going to get 0% of what they wanted at all. I wonder if that ever became a pattern...

i mean that's true if all they wanted was Bernie Sanders and not anything he supported

and judging by how some fled to trump that might have been true in some cases

# ¿ Nov 10, 2016 03:45

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

I still remember all the worst Hillarymen smugly asserting that they didn't have to grant any concessions to Bernie supporters because they lost, and should Deal With It, and the only sensible path forward was to court Neocon war criminals and moderate Republicans, only to have Democrats decisively vote more for Trump than the other way around.

ah yes, hillary supporters saying we should court the war criminal vote such as

# ¿ Nov 10, 2016 03:47

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Cubey posted:

i do not think the number of berniebros who went to trump or even third part was significant enough to swing the election either way. bernie supporters overwhelmingly supported clinton when he conceded, don't let idiots on facebook and twitter lead you to believe otherwise.

that's why i'm always careful to say "some" and "a portion"

a majority of sanders supporters are really good people! there's just a super obnoxious vocal minority that is unfortunately out in full force at the moment

E: and i'm not arguing that sanders supporters won things for trump either, just that it's a bit odd to be placing 100% of the blame solely on hillary

# ¿ Nov 10, 2016 03:47

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Vox Nihili posted:

it's....... really, really not odd to place the blame for losing on the candidate that lost.

i said solely

# ¿ Nov 10, 2016 03:55

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Not a Step posted:

lol. Never change.

same to you, guy doing weird i told you so victory lap

# ¿ Nov 10, 2016 03:55

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Vox Nihili posted:

YOU'RE just supposed to be WITH ME! it's not my job to campaign and win!! (it is precisely your job & you let us all down & now we're all crying and screaming & possibly dying soon)

i mean besides anime was right's fantastic post all i'm seeing about what she could have done better is "immediately concede to bernie sanders who would have won because[insert fanfiction]"

# ¿ Nov 10, 2016 03:57

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

i think we should at least TRY to have unity instead of immediately eating ourselves, though i am also guilty of this and apologize

e: unity between left i mean, not with trump gently caress him

# ¿ Nov 10, 2016 08:17

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Doorknob Slobber posted:

protest outside their homes

inconvience the rich

nothing gets america to pay attention quite like rich people being inconvinenced

(this uh isnt irony)

# ¿ Nov 19, 2016 14:15

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

etalian posted:

lol, it's almost like running the perfect example of washington insider who didn't promise any sort of change was doomed to failure.

she promised a lot of change, but yknow emails

perhaps there was a better choice than "woman seen by most of the country as a literal witch" to represent that change though

# ¿ Nov 19, 2016 14:22

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

theflyingexecutive posted:

thx for the upgrade, love me some drat frostys

sir, this is a literal garbage dump

# ¿ Nov 19, 2016 16:51

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Lactose Is Wack posted:

it would probably be one of the first attacks leveled should you try and voice your opinion

i wasn't aware dws had fans, anywhere

# ¿ Nov 20, 2016 16:37

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

like even in the hillariest of hugboxes the only statements on dws were "i hope she gets fired out of a cannon into the sun"

# ¿ Nov 20, 2016 16:46

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Mirthless posted:

What do you think the protests are if not condescending to the working class? In what way do the protests speak to the rage of a working class and promise a better future for them?

And why do you assume it's the working class out there protesting, anyway? From everything I've seen it's just what counts as the "core left" now - minorities and white millennials. While those are both frequently working class demos, they are not the particular group of liberals we lost this election and need to win back. The liberals we lost this election are the kind of people who think they are being condescended to when they hear a pundit on TV talk about Hillary winning "educated whites" because they are literally too uneducated to know the difference between "uneducated" and "stupid". Optics loving matter. Optics always mattered.

how the gently caress is a mass protest condescending to anyone

# ¿ Nov 20, 2016 20:52

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

*carried on a gleaming golden throne, slipping tea from a diamond-encrusted cup w/ pinky extended* hm yes fight the power

# ¿ Nov 20, 2016 20:52

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

GlyphGryph posted:

Yeah, the protests so far have mostly just been embarrassing rather than condescending.

I mean the whole point of them is just to tell donald trump to go gently caress himself

# ¿ Nov 20, 2016 21:00

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Al! posted:

you were so close but then you picked one side of the coin anyway, see the problem?????

# ¿ Nov 21, 2016 21:43

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

listen there's no reason we can't do both at once, but we have to do my side first and everything else will fix itself qed

# ¿ Nov 21, 2016 21:44

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

loquacius posted:

This thread alternately fills me with hope and makes me decide that the only way we could fix this is if we had a bunch of starry-eyed millenials go into local-level government right now so that they could hopefully fix everything in twenty or thirty years, by which point the world will have been a Fallout-esque post-nuclear wasteland for 18 or 28 years already anyway so why loving bother

"why bother" is the exact attitude that got us into this mess

get pissed and do something

# ¿ Nov 21, 2016 21:47

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

that fat orange gently caress and his poo poo squad are just pleased as punch and ready to destroy everything you love

gently caress them

# ¿ Nov 21, 2016 21:48

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

loquacius posted:

"Once everyone makes a living wage and has political rights, it won't matter if angry people throw poo poo at you when they see you holding your same-sex spouse's hand in the street, because you can go home to your money and everything will be all better. Just dive into your Scrooge McDuck money pit of Living Wage, and forget the haters. Feels good "

"All we have to do is make sure that Congress and every corporate boardroom in America has the same racial, gender, and sexual-orientation demographics as all of America does, using the most recent census data, and I'm sure they'll fix the rest of the problems themselves. What's class? I've never heard of this concept "

it's like there's two problems that, while interconnected, still both need to be addressed

# ¿ Nov 21, 2016 21:52

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Serf posted:

Speaking as someone from a southern state, the sooner Democrats drop the gun control issue the better. I know way too many people who refused to vote for Clinton on the basis that "she wants to take our guns". Absolutely hated Trump and didn't vote for him, but also refused to vote for Democrats as well. Gun control is a losing issue for losers. There's a reason why the Blue Dog Democrats were able to hold on for as long as they did.

gun control is still a very important issue imo even if it's not popular

# ¿ Nov 23, 2016 19:22

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Sheng-ji Yang posted:

kind of off topic but i listened to some more chapo trap house and 1. theyre pretty good 2. they have to be old lf posters or something

i even chipped in to their patreon, which is the first one of these kickstarter things ive ever done and i feel dirty

how much did you donate to the jill stein audit money machine

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ¿ Nov 24, 2016 06:04

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Parallax Scroll posted:

democrats should drop the gun issue. it alienates too many voters.

it's still an important issue

though perhaps there are somewhat more pressing issues at the moment, like the orange goblin

# ¿ Nov 25, 2016 00:27

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Rand alPaul posted:

Compulsory militia musters as well.

this seems like a better argument for gun control than any kind of research or million dollar ad campaign

"look at these chucklefucks"

# ¿ Nov 25, 2016 07:44

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Ace of Baes posted:

the fact that were capable of electing someone like Donald Trump is a pretty good argument for keeping the populace armed.

also equally an argument against it

# ¿ Nov 25, 2016 08:21

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

SHY NUDIST GRRL posted:

It doesnt need to really be said more than Hillary surrounded herself with useless people, then bounce off that to attack her remaining allies trying to cling to power.

confirmed, we must destroy bernie sanders

# ¿ Nov 25, 2016 19:29

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

It's xenophobic to assume that Russia is behind a massive fake news conspiracy, and to credit organizations that smear left wing and anti-war websites which aren't even pro-Russian in any way whatsoever. Also, weirdly enough, websites that are critical of Israel. Hmm.

considering people have literally gone to russia and seen the Professional Troll Lairs uhhh

# ¿ Nov 25, 2016 21:23

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

LegoPirateNinja posted:

yes, fine, but, you might remember that during the Cold War everything was blamed on the Russians. Then we blamed everything on Terrorism, but that isn't working out so now we have to go back to blaming Russia. With Trump in power that may change. The point is, there always has to be an Other to justify the Very Bad Things our nation has to do.

Openly embracing self interest makes you a fascist. Hiding it makes you a liberal.

what if a lot of things are literally russia's fault though

blaming everything on russia is dumb but equally dumb is saying they're just scapegoats and weren't constantly loving with the election

# ¿ Nov 25, 2016 21:33

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

It is designed, as retired KGB General Oleg Kalugin once defined it, 'to drive wedges in the Western community alliances of all sorts, particularly NATO, to sow discord among allies, to weaken the United States in the eyes of the people in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and thus to prepare ground in case the war really occurs.' The most common subcategory of active measures is dezinformatsiya, or disinformation: feverish, if believable lies cooked up by Moscow Centre and planted in friendly media outlets to make democratic nations look sinister.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2016 21:37

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

though tbf all they had to do was get the ball rolling and the home-grown american nutjobs did the rest

# ¿ Nov 25, 2016 21:38

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

i mean it's not like russia had some grand machiavellian plan here, but having a bunch of computermen running around starting poo poo wherever possible, when everyone gets their news from social media, perhaps wasn't helping.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2016 21:43

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Joementum posted:

Putin runs a mafia state and funds propaganda against the US, but that doesn't mean that every single site critical of the American empire is part of his web. Russia also didn't poison Hillary Clinton, run a banking server out of Trump's basement, hack Michigan's non-existent voting machines, or secretly tape a Trump orgy.

If you're concerned about the effect of fake news and propaganda, inventing conspiracy theories to explain an embarrassing electoral loss is not a good way to fight back.

oh yeah not saying it was ALL RUSSIA, just that russia was definitely loving around during all this

Homework Explainer posted:

yep. the (many) awful things about the russian government under putin can be traced back to yeltsin's tenure and the restoration of capitalism more generally

i mean communism wasn't a great time either

# ¿ Nov 25, 2016 23:02

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Well What Now posted:

the workers of the proletariat are too stupid for their own good so we the communist ruling class mustn't let them

don't worry comerades, when you find yourself with too many possessions the state will take them to distribute them properly *smokes gold-plated pipe*

# ¿ Nov 25, 2016 23:35

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Homework Explainer posted:

internet poster in confusing personal property with private property shocker

lol

# ¿ Nov 25, 2016 23:51

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Karl Sharks posted:

what about a car? boat? plane? aircraft carrier? nuclear submarine?

the state will decide these things, comrade

and also reserves the right to change it's mind arbitrarily if your ride is too cool

# ¿ Nov 26, 2016 00:40

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 13:10

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

Bushiz posted:

Private ownership of cars should be illegal unless you've got a bitchin whip. To deprive someone of a totally sick donk or a badass slab would be to break the pen of a writer or the brushes of a painter.

Lenin's Bitchin Whip

# ¿ Nov 26, 2016 03:03

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > SUK ZONE: it's all a pointless exercise and you're just screaming into the void

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